AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03)
Bootcamp Certificate Track
Build cloud architecture fundamentals with AWS. Master secure, resilient, high-performing, and cost-optimized design patterns through hands-on labs and real-world scenarios. Estimated effort: 60–90 hours.
🔗 Official Certification PageWho This Is For
- Engineers starting architecture roles on AWS
- IT professionals moving to AWS
What You'll Gain
- Strong AWS architecture fundamentals
- Confidence designing secure and resilient systems
6-Week Bootcamp Curriculum
Hands-on training covering all SAA-C03 exam domains with practical labs
Week 1 — Identity, Access & Secure AWS Foundations
Exam Focus: Task 1.1 – Design secure access to AWS resources
What You'll Learn
- AWS shared responsibility model
- AWS global infrastructure: Regions, Availability Zones
- Identity and access services: IAM, IAM Identity Center (AWS SSO)
- Root user and IAM user security (MFA, least privilege)
- IAM users, groups, roles, and policies
- Role-based access control using AWS STS, role switching, cross-account access
- Multi-account security strategy: AWS Organizations, AWS Control Tower, Service Control Policies (SCPs)
- When to use resource-based policies
- Federation with external identity providers
Hands-On Labs
- Secure the root account and configure MFA
- Create IAM users, roles, and policies
- Implement cross-account access with IAM roles
- Design a multi-account structure using AWS Organizations
Week 2 — Secure Networking & Application Protection
Exam Focus: Task 1.2 – Design secure workloads and applications
What You'll Learn
- Secure VPC design: Security groups, Network ACLs, Route tables, NAT gateways
- Public vs private subnet design
- Secure application access patterns
- Protecting applications with AWS WAF, AWS Shield, AWS Cognito
- Secrets and credentials management using AWS Secrets Manager
- Securing external connectivity: Site-to-site VPN, Client VPN, AWS Direct Connect
- Threat vectors: DDoS, injection attacks
Hands-On Labs
- Design a secure multi-tier VPC architecture
- Implement private subnets with NAT access
- Protect an application using AWS WAF
- Store and retrieve secrets using Secrets Manager
Week 3 — Data Security & Encryption
Exam Focus: Task 1.3 – Determine appropriate data security controls
What You'll Learn
- Data access governance and classification
- Encryption strategies: At rest (AWS KMS), In transit (ACM, TLS)
- Key management and rotation
- Backup and replication strategies
- Data lifecycle and retention policies
- Aligning AWS services with compliance requirements
Hands-On Labs
- Encrypt data using AWS KMS
- Implement TLS using AWS Certificate Manager
- Configure S3 lifecycle and access policies
- Design backup and replication strategies
Week 4 — Scalable, Loosely Coupled & Event-Driven Architectures
Exam Focus: Task 2.1 – Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures
What You'll Learn
- Microservices and event-driven architectures
- Messaging and queuing: Amazon SQS, SNS
- API design using Amazon API Gateway
- Serverless architectures: AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate
- Container orchestration: Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS
- Caching strategies: Amazon ElastiCache
- Load balancing concepts: Application Load Balancer (ALB)
- Storage types: Object, file, block
- Workflow orchestration: AWS Step Functions
Hands-On Labs
- Build an event-driven architecture using SQS and Lambda
- Deploy a containerized application using ECS or EKS
- Implement API Gateway with backend services
- Add caching using ElastiCache
Week 5 — High Availability, Fault Tolerance & Performance
Exam Focus: Tasks 2.2 + 3.x – High availability & performance
What You'll Learn
- High availability across AZs and Regions
- Disaster recovery strategies: Backup and restore, Pilot light, Warm standby, Active-active
- RTO and RPO design
- Auto scaling strategies
- Immutable infrastructure
- Database performance and scaling: Read replicas, Proxies
- Storage performance and durability
- Monitoring and tracing: Amazon CloudWatch, AWS X-Ray
Hands-On Labs
- Design a multi-AZ highly available architecture
- Implement EC2 Auto Scaling
- Configure read replicas for databases
- Monitor workloads using CloudWatch and X-Ray
Week 6 — Cost-Optimized Architectures & Capstone
Exam Focus: Task 4.x – Cost optimization
What You'll Learn
- AWS cost management tools: Cost Explorer, Budgets, Cost and Usage Report
- Cost allocation tags and multi-account billing
- Cost-optimized storage strategies: S3 tiers, Lifecycle policies
- Cost-optimized compute: Spot Instances, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans
- Cost-optimized databases: RDS vs DynamoDB, Serverless options
- Cost-optimized networking: NAT gateway vs NAT instance, VPC endpoints, CloudFront and Global Accelerator
Hands-On Labs
- Design cost-optimized storage and lifecycle policies
- Compare compute purchasing options
- Optimize database and network costs
- Review workloads for cost improvements
Capstone Project
- Design a secure, scalable, highly available, and cost-optimized AWS architecture
- Cover: Identity and security, Networking, Compute, Storage, Databases
- Architecture review and justification session
Certification Outcome
By completing this bootcamp, learners will be able to:
- Design secure and resilient AWS architectures
- Select appropriate AWS services based on requirements
- Optimize for performance, availability, and cost
- Confidently sit the SAA-C03 certification exam
- Perform effectively in Cloud Engineer / Junior Solutions Architect roles
Need a Custom Learning Path?
If you are new to cloud computing, we recommend starting with Cloud Foundation — Live Bootcamp before AWS SAA.
You can book a free consultation to receive a personalized learning curriculum.
Ready to Start?
Join the bootcamp and begin your journey to AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification